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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26174680">Effervescent</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/galwednesday/pseuds/galwednesday'>galwednesday</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Old Guard (Movie 2020)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Established Relationship, F/F, Hot Goth Cashier, hypothetical mafia girlfriends, or as fandom has dubbed her, the inherent eroticism of unhelpfully clinging to your partner’s back as they try to make breakfast, vampires invoked but not present, we can have little a Charlize Theron in too-short silk pajamas. as a treat.</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 04:01:52</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>907</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26174680</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/galwednesday/pseuds/galwednesday</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>"I think my girlfriend is in the mafia."</p><p>Ninon gasped. "You have a girlfriend?"</p><p>Celeste pretended to aim a kick at her shoulder. "You're focusing on the wrong thing."</p><p>"You haven't had a girlfriend since Lisbet fucked off to Belgium," Ninon said. "I'm focusing on exactly what I should be focusing on. Is she tall? I bet she's tall."</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Celeste</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>78</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>506</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Effervescent</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is, spiritually, at least 30% aetataureate’s fault.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"I think my girlfriend is in the mafia.”</p><p>Ninon gasped. "You have a girlfriend?"</p><p>Celeste pretended to aim a kick at her shoulder. "You're focusing on the wrong thing."</p><p>"You haven't had a girlfriend since Lisbet fucked off to Belgium," Ninon said. "I'm focusing on exactly what I should be focusing on. Is she tall? I bet she's tall. Show me a picture."</p><p>"I don't have any pictures of her, because she avoids cameras, because she's in the <em> mafia</em>."</p><p>"Lay out your evidence." Her wine forgotten on the table, Ninon sprawled back on the rug, stretching her toes towards the fireplace. It wasn't a very cold night, but Celeste had a small fire burning anyway, to make the lighting more dramatic. It fit the mood of the conversation better than the electric lamp with the soft pastel pink shade her landlady had pointedly given her. Madame Richelieu didn't approve of Celeste's idea of interior decorating, which Celeste called "minimalist" and Ninon called "non-existent." </p><p>"The first time I met her, I helped her dress a stab wound."</p><p>"Suspicious," Ninon allowed.</p><p>"All of her friends stop talking whenever I walk into the room."</p><p>"That just means they're gossiping about you. We would stop talking now if your girlfriend walked in."</p><p>"If my girlfriend walked in, you would start interrogating her."</p><p>"Well, what else am I supposed to do, when you've become a mafia girlfriend without even telling me you met someone? Clearly your judgment can't be trusted." </p><p>Celeste settled onto the rug beside her, resting her head on Ninon’s stomach. “I don’t know for certain that she’s in the mafia. But she came back from a trip to Syria three days ago and her passport was here the whole time, so how did she travel there?”</p><p>“Is she <em> living </em> with you? When I haven’t even <em> met </em> her?”</p><p>Celeste smacked Ninon’s thigh. “She just forgot her bag here. She’s still living with her friends.” Andy had come by the day she got back, but Celeste had been too distracted by her unusually unguarded smile as she opened a box of kanafeh to share to ask any pertinent questions about passports. </p><p>“Are her friends mafia?”</p><p>“I don’t know. They’re…” She listened to the wood pop and tried to find a description that wasn’t <em> fucking weird </em> or <em> unsettlingly attractive </em> or <em> strangely nice for a group of maybe-mafia</em>. It wasn’t hard to imagine the husband pair, José and Nicolas, as bodyguards; they looked strangely worried every time Andy sneezed. “Very close.”</p><p>Ninon sat up fast, dumping Celeste’s head to the floor. Celeste’s yelped protest went unheeded. “Do you think she’s a vampire?”</p><p>“A <em> vampire</em>?”</p><p>“They could all be in a coven!” Ninon was clearly thrilled with her new theory, the allure of organized crime forgotten in the face of <em> supernatural </em> organized crime. That is, if it was still a crime to travel without a passport if you were a vampire. Did vampires have citizenship?</p><p>Celeste let her head drop back down to the rug. "Why would a vampire need to buy bandages at a drug store?"</p><p>"She must have sensed your dark and forbidding aura and gone in to seduce you. That, or she guessed you would be a willing victim based on the way you dress. If you'd worn your sunflower necklace, none of this would have happened."</p><p>Celeste made a face. "Lisbet gave me that necklace."</p><p>"Ah." Ninon paused delicately. "Then could I borrow it?"</p><p>"Get out of my apartment."</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Celeste knew it was ridiculous, but she spent the next few days watching to see if Andy paid extra attention to her neck or wrists. It didn’t come to anything; Andy never seemed to single out Celeste's pulse points for attention. If anything, Celeste was the one who liked to leave bites. Celeste came into the kitchen a week after to find Andy with her shirt collar pulled open, examining the red and purple love bite Celeste left under the notch of her collarbone. She let go of the fabric when Celeste slid arms around her waist from behind.</p><p>"Should I not have?" Celeste asked. The morning was quiet, traffic slow to start with the sky still lightening, and Andy was warm in her arms, sleep soft and smelling of Celeste’s shampoo.</p><p>"I like it." Andy pressed her hand over the layer of fabric covering the mark, a strange little smile on her face. "I like that you don't touch me like I'll break."</p><p>Celeste couldn’t imagine thinking of Andy as fragile. Even now, with her narrow wrists emerging from sleeves two inches too short because she’d borrowed Celeste's one good set of silk pajamas, Andy looked like steel would bend around her. It was, perhaps, the absolute assurance with which she moved, grace without delicacy as she hooked two coffee mugs by the handles in one hand and turned on the stove hob with the other. Celeste rested her chin on Andy’s shoulder and watched unabashedly, obstructing Andy’s elbows as she toasted yesterday’s bread in a pan with butter the way Celeste’s grandfather used to do it. </p><p>“If you were a vampire,” Celeste said into the warm crease where Andy’s neck met her shoulder, “you would tell me, right?”</p><p>Celeste had to turn the stove off before the bread burned. Andy stayed on the kitchen floor, laughing too hard to stand, until Celeste dropped the tablecloth over her head to muffle her wheezing before Madame Richelieu came upstairs to complain.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>BONUS SCENE FROM UNSPECIFIED TIME IN THE FUTURE AFTER ANDY TELLS ALL:</p><p>"How old are you?" Celeste asked cautiously. Nile looked young, younger than all the rest, but whether that corresponded to actual age, Celeste had no idea.</p><p>"Twenty-six."</p><p>"Ah.” Celeste hesitated, not sure how personal the question was, but Nile was American, and unlikely to be offended. “How long have you been twenty-six?"</p><p>Nile's face did something complicated, her eyes taking on a manic gleam. "A while."</p><p>Celeste was still trying to find a tactful way to respond when Nile's fixed expression cracked into cackles of laughter. It was a movie reference, apparently, and Celeste didn’t get the joke, but when Nile showed her pictures of the lead actress in a suit, her haircut almost the same as Andy's, she understood the appeal.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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